A military standard 1553 bus was initially designed to support military avionics, but has become used for various onboard data handling subsystems on a variety of aircraft and spacecraft, both military and commercial. A military standard 1553 bus conforms to the MIL-STD-1553B specification which was originally published in 1978 and is now entitled “Digital Time Division Command/Response Multiplex Data Bus”. A military standard 1553 bus includes a dual redundant balanced line physical layer, employs time division multiplexing and supports a half-duplex command/response protocol. A plurality of remote terminals or devices, such as up to 31 remote terminals or devices, may be communicably connected to a military standard 1553 bus so as to communicate thereover.
Not only has the use of military standard 1553 buses proliferated onboard aircraft and other platforms, but the same aircraft and other platforms also generally include a number of other buses for supporting communication between devices in accordance with other communication protocols. By utilizing separate buses for the different communication protocols, communication signals transmitted via each of the buses may be relatively independent so as not to interfere with the communication signals transmitted via the other buses in accordance with a different communication protocol. However, the increase in the number of buses and the demand for even further increases in the number of buses correspondingly cause the number of cables and wires required for the additional buses to increase which may disadvantageously increase the weight onboard an aircraft, increase the cost associated with the communication buses onboard an aircraft, increase the power consumed by the communications buses and increase the cost and time required to install and integrate the communication buses and the plurality of devices that communicate thereover.